Dimmi has blacklisted 38,000 people who didn’t show up to their restaurant booking.

Dimmi is Australia’s largest online reservation service used by over 4000 restaurants around the country, making up close to 40 per cent of Australia’s restaurant market.

Diners will end up on the blacklist if they fail to show up at a restaurant booking, leaving them unable to book at that establishment for one year, unless certain discretion is made by the restaurant.

The figure comes from Dimmi’s annual No Show Report and revealed a huge jump from the 3159 diners that had a mark against their name from March last year, a month after the program commenced. According to data lifted from the report, and despite the figure, the penalty system is working with a 25 per cent drop in restaurant no-shows in the last twelve months.

A part of this drop is also from the introduction of the Dimmi Payments system which was implemented to address the estimated $75 million lost by industry no-shows each year. Designed to deter no-shows, it stores credit card details so users have to pre-payment for bookings.

Dimmi founder and CEO Stevan Premutico advises that if you plan on cancelling the booking, to give 24 hours notice as a common courtesy, but that four hours notice is still usually enough time for the restaurant to re-book the table.